The Book of Jake

By Steve Lerner

After Jake's wife, Tess, kicks him out of the house, he's forced to face his selfish hedonistic ways. To win her back, Jake turns to the Book of Proverbs and begins steering a course toward righteousness, maturity and redemption.
Then Roger calls.
It'll take a lot more than ancient allegory to get Jake through the ensuing odyssey of brutal murder, betrayal and extortion with sadistic drug dealers, vicious Rottweilers, and a lot of generally annoying people to keep him company.
Woody Allen meets James M. Cain in this masterful comic crime mashup by Steve Lerner.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hekate Publishing
• Release date: Sep 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781912017942

Book preview

coincidental.

ONE

My name is Jake, short for Jacob, who, as you probably know, is a big deal in the Bible. Not as big as Adam or Eve or Noah or Moses, but once you get past the glitz and into the more subtle underpinnings of our hypothetical spiritual origins, you’re going to find Jacob pretty interesting. When I was in my teens, I cracked open a Bible. Here’s what I learned: Jacob is the prototypical opportunist in the history of the world.

Quick background. In ancient times, the firstborn male inherited everything. Little brothers didn’t get crap. Now, it so happened that Jacob had a twin, but firstborn is firstborn, whether by two years and seven months or five minutes and nine seconds. Mom Rebecca goes into labor; the fight is on. Twin Esau sticks his head out, it looks like he’s firstborn, he’ll never have to work. But wait. As the midwife guides him gently out of Mom, she notices a precious little hand clamped to his ankle trying to pull him back in.

Now, that’s an opportunist.

Jacob’s initial attempt at claiming the inheritance is unsuccessful; all he gets for the effort is a ride into the world on the ankle express, and the name Jacob, which is Hebrew for heel grabber. Which he probably gets tired of explaining to people when he meets them.

Esau is uncommonly hairy for a newborn, so he is given the name Esau, which means hairy, a more appealing name than heel grabber, especially if you stand to inherit land, silver and hundreds of goats.

But Jacob isn’t done, not by a longshot. He’s a determined boy, and as far as he is concerned the inheritance is still up for grabs. A few years go by. One day Esau walks up to Jacob and says he’s hungry, he needs something right away or he’s going to faint. Opportunity has knocked. As it happens, Jacob has some food handy and suggests an exchange for the birthright. Esau, his judgment clouded by hunger pangs, says sure, why not. I have never looked into what ancient Talmudic scholars had to say about whether this would have been legally binding or not, but Jacob isn’t one to take chances. More years go by. Their father Isaac is dying. His eyesight is fading, so Jacob puts on one of Esau’s shirts, robes, whatever, and sticks some goat hair on his arm and visits Dad. Clinging to his last moments of earthly life, Isaac reaches for Jacob’s arm, feels the goat hair, thinks it’s Esau, gives him the birthright.

I don’t remember who ends up inheriting the land, the silver, the goats, what have you, but a few years later, Jacob spends the night wrestling with God. As you would expect, God wins, he’s God, but Jacob has proven his tenaciousness, and his name is changed to Israel, which means perseveres.

As of this moment, I’m still Jake.

Unlike Bible Jacob, I am not a twin. Also, I have only one wife. Bible Jacob had two. On top of which, he fathered a child with the maid. Which I almost did. Which is how I got to be living at the Cheshire Motel on 6th.

In the Bible, Jacob’s wife actually encouraged him to have sex with the maid. She wasn’t having any luck getting pregnant and she wanted a baby because she was competing with Jacob’s other wife to produce a child and it was her maid so she’d be ahead. Not the case with my wife. Vastly different cultures. Anyway, Tess and I were already in consultation with divorce attorneys when I bedded down the maid, and in my opinion when two people agree that a marriage is over, they are no longer married in the biblical sense. Only the paperwork remains. I never cheated on Tess before we said that word, divorce. But then, yeah.

The Esau in my story is my ex-best friend Roger. His family moved into our neighborhood when we were both five years old. Looking back, I probably should have known that he was a self-centered cocksucker. I did suspect it, but figured, because I was so young, that I lacked sufficient life experience to have opinions of much value, so I ignored the instinctual revulsion. But there was another factor: I was lazy when it came to choosing friends.

I suspect it’s normal for a child, upon first venturing into the world, to evaluate members of his peer group and establish bonds with those who meet certain standards and reciprocate interest. Being lazy, my method was this: whoever showed up with any degree of regularity was my friend. To put it another way, whatever mud hit the windshield and stuck would accompany me down the road of childhood.

When I was five, Roger hit the windshield. Splat. He wasn’t someone who met any particular standards. We were the same age, he lived nearby; thus: friendship. To carry the mud-hitting-the-windshield metaphor one step further, I should have turned on the wipers.

It’s not like he spent his mornings in the backyard torturing cats and setting chaise lounges on fire. However, there were occasions when I witnessed him bullying smaller boys. I only remained his friend because I believed these to be passing episodes. After all, he lived in a broken home, his parents having divorced when he was three. His father’s visits were brief and sporadic, like those of a largely disinterested cousin. This, I believed, might account for a lot of hostility. But what really distinguished Roger was something else. At the time, I assumed it was a common personality trait, but I have never since met a child who was so completely and irredeemably an egomaniac. Which means he’s been able to take it to a higher level than the other, later-blooming egomaniacs. He cheated at sports and games, and defended his brazen tactics with the passion and determination of a high-priced attorney. Yet none of this ever stopped him from sensing a certain rare nobility in himself.

Given this unique set of personality traits, he headed off to business school. After all these years, I still don’t know much about his job except that he wears a suit and spends a lot of time at his desk. Maybe he analyzes reports. I don’t know. Not that Roger could analyze anything. What he could do is stare at a report for a long time and not get bored, relishing the feeling of looking useful and important. That’s how shallow he is.

Why his wife Louise fell for him is a mystery. I’d often notice something deep in her eyes as she’d look at me across the table when the four of us were out to dinner; a sort of you know him, tell me I’m wrong look.

My wife Tess has never liked him, and it’s probable that the contrast he provided made me more attractive to her. I think I’ve harbored a subconscious gratitude to him for that all these years.

I’ll never say a bad word about Tess. I’ve often wondered if what she really needs isn’t someone exactly like herself but with a penis. We started out well, but at some point our magic carpet turned into a throw rug. I still remember romantic evenings, with the starlit sky shimmering and the ocean purring, the two of us strolling hand in hand along the pier. We’d pause in the moon shadow of some enormous yacht, embrace and kiss, and then cling to one another as if we’d never let go. If life was a moonlit pier, we’d have been fine.

It’s not, so now I’m in a motel.

One day I’m lying in bed in my motel room. I’m fully clothed, watching TV. When you’re married, you can’t sleep in your shirt and pants, so I’m living it up. I’m watching superhero cartoons, flipping through my mental Rolodex of local drive-thru menus, and it’s looking good for the chili cheeseburger but the choice of sides is holding things up. That and I don’t feel like moving. I’m doing everything I can think of that would drive Tess crazy. In the back of my mind, I can hear a faint, triumphant shout echoing, as if carried by sacred winds from across the sea. It is the impassioned cry of the Reverend Martin Luther King: Free at last! Free at last! Free at last!

The phone rings. It’s Roger.

I just killed a hooker, he says. What are you doing?

"Watching Super Friends, I say, and hit the mute button on the remote. What?"

I just killed a hooker.

"What does that cost?" I’m not being flippant, I just don’t think he’s serious.

Roger sighs.

You killed a hooker? I ask.

It was an accident. I need your help.

I glance at the television. A new cartoon has begun, and the words Super Friends blaze across the screen.

You need my help?

Jake... There is a four-second pause. Roger has a natural sense of timing. You owe me, buddy.

Yeah, I owe you. Maybe a stock tip. A ride to the airport.

He is silent. I can sense him glaring over the phone.

"You want me to help you dump a dead hooker